How Pleasant is Dallas Weather?

Via Wired, I learned of a designer and engineer in Atlanta who got wondering which places in the United States offer the greatest number of “pleasant” weather days each year. He crunched government data from the last 23 years and came up with this interactive map.

His definition of “pleasant” is a day with average temperatures between 55 and 75 degrees F, a minimum temperature of 45, and a maximum of 85. Using those criteria North Texas has between 59 and 65 pleasant days a year, depending on where exactly you live.

That’s far better than the low end of the list, like places in Montana that get only a couple weeks’ worth of pleasant days a year. But Dallas is far worse off by this measure than the top of the list, which is dominated by much of California with between 150 and 183 days a year of gorgeous weather.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you that his system is clearly broken. For one, he doesn’t factor in humidity. That oversight explains why Houston (67-81 days) supposedly is better off than we are, weather-wise. Really that’s all you need to know. You can junk this entire effort.

If somebody wants to do this right, I think you’ve got to set a maximum allowable humidity for the day, and probably also dock locations for each day of the year they spend on one of the extreme ends of temperature (high above 95 and low below 30).

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Heat index would be a better measure, but it should also deduct points for rainy or overcast days, in the opinion of this gentle sock puppet.

Monte Malone

It is pleasant here in Dallas at the moment. 31F, no blazing sun, crisp air. I love it.

James the P3

And my wife, God bless her demented soul, claims to like seasons. Personally, I could be very happy in San Diego without ever seeing a measurable change in temperature from January to July. But for such people, Dallas does provide a nice mix of seasons while also giving a pretty high number of patio-weather days.